Moral Connections Between Rural Tourism and Socio-Ecological Resilience in the EUME Region, Galicia
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sustainability Article “May the Smoke Keep Coming Out the Fireplace”: Moral Connections between Rural Tourism and Socio-Ecological Resilience in the EUME Region, Galicia Bibiana Martínez Álvarez 1 and Jose A. Cortes-Vazquez 2,* 1 Department of Anthropology, University of Barcelona, 08007 Barcelona, Spain; [email protected] 2 Department of Sociology and Communication, University of A Coruña, 15001 A Coruña, Spain * Correspondence: [email protected] Received: 10 April 2020; Accepted: 2 June 2020; Published: 4 June 2020 Abstract: For several decades, tourism has been considered an important instrument for the sustainable development of rural areas. However, a great deal of scholarship has cast a doubt on the actual economic and ecological impacts of many of these initiatives. Acknowledging these critiques, we argue in this paper that a more accurate examination of the implication of rural development projects based on tourism should not merely look at the number of overnight stays or the income generated, but also at the multiple, subtle and complex implications of tourism for socio-ecological resilience. In order to do this, we argue, it is crucial to pay attention to the moral values underpinning tourism practices. Through an ethnographic analysis of the material, symbolic and experiential transformations brought about by a number of tourism initiatives in a rural region in Galicia, our goal is to discuss the complex connections between the promotion of this new activity, the diversification of the local economy, and the social reproduction of local communities and their specific forms of human-environment engagements. Keywords: tourism; resilience; sustainability; Galicia; community; moral economy 1. Introduction Since the 1980s, tourism has been considered strategic to the sustainable development of rural areas [1–4]. It stimulates job creation, farm diversification, the promotion of local food and drinks, the stewardship of natural and cultural resource, and community cohesion. In Europe, good examples of this are the rural tourism initiatives that emerged in the 1990s and the 2000s, with the support of different LEADER programs [5]. They aimed to mitigate the depopulation of rural regions that were socially and economically marginalized in the process of agrarian modernization during the twentieth century by providing subsidies and incentives for the diversification of their local economies and the preservation of environmental values [6]. However, many have argued over the controversies surrounding these initiatives, as tourism in rural areas also creates problems such as rising housing prices and environmental impacts [5,7–9]. In many cases, it has also failed to become an activity significant enough to ameliorate the socioeconomic problems of rural communities. Inadequate regulation and tax systems, a lack of infrastructure, faulty marketing strategies and strong competition with coastal destinations are usually identified as culprits. At a more subjective level, the lack of involvement among local communities is also seen as another crucial barrier [3]. What is more, many criticize that rural tourism is barely different from any other kind of tourism [8]: it might just help to expand capitalism [7,10], creating important impacts that are contradict sustainability goals. Sustainability 2020, 12, 4602; doi:10.3390/su12114602 www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability Sustainability 2020, 12, 4602 2 of 21 As growing fields of enquiry that reflect on socioeconomic forces and power relations in the production of tourism commodities, both political economy and political ecology studies have been particularly adamant about the social and environmental impacts of tourism and the need for alternatives [11,12]. However, these studies pay insufficient attention to how tourism initiatives and practices are influenced by moral norms [13]. As Mostafanezhad and Hannam [14] argue, just as the economy is also morality, not only power and interests [15], so is tourism. This paper delves into the impacts (both positive and negative) of tourism in rural communities and ecosystems through a theoretical approach that focuses on moral values [13,14]. This kind of examination involves analyzing impacts through the study of specific personal and collective strategies in tourism, the values attached to different touristic practices vis-à-vis human–environment interactions, and the variegated “uses” of tourism. Such an analysis will serve to outline the contours of what we could call a “moral ecology” of tourism. Since the 1990s, critical studies in tourism have not only highlighted the ills of tourism worldwide, but also encouraged new, more ethical forms of tourism, acknowledging the varieties and heterogeneity within the tourist sector. The debates around community-based tourism (CBT) are one example. CBT provides an alternative way of organizing tourism following certain principles, such as local ownership of natural and cultural resources, the local participation and local control of tourism business, and tourism as a complement to local economies [16]. Beyond the unique forms of organization and governance within CBT, other important features are the alternative “senses” and “meanings” of tourism. CBT hinges on a different set of moral values, such as the promotion of communal interests and shared access to benefits, instead of mere individual profit [17]. This kind of attention to morality in tourism is rather recent [14], yet morality has been central to the critical analysis of the tourist business for decades. Either seen positively (as a passport to development for countries in the Global South or a force promoting world peace) or negatively (as a new form of colonialism, capitalist expansion, or a frivolous consumerist experience), from a morality perspective, tourism is never neutral: it always has moral implications. The kind of analysis that we intend to carry out in this paper builds on the field of moral economy, understood as the study of the moral values and cultural norms embedded in all economic practices [15,18]. This field rejects dichotomist conceptions that separate economic practice from morality. As Palomera and Vetta suggest: “Against binary views of the market as a boundless realm penetrating previously untainted moral spheres, [ ::: ] social reproduction is characterized by an entanglement of values” [19] (p. 413). Therefore, there is not a capitalist form of tourism versus a moral form of tourism, just the contrary: moral values are present in every type of tourism [20]. Furthermore, the debates around alternative and more ethical ways of organizing tourism are moving from the analysis of benefits to the local communities and ecosystems to the broader idea of socio-ecological resilience, understood as the capacity of a socio-ecosystem that is subjected to some kind of stress or profound change to regenerate itself in a creative way without altering its form and functions significantly [21]. As Ruiz-Ballesteros [22] argues, in order to understand the impacts of tourism practices we need to approach local communities in its inextricable connection with the surrounding environment. Such an approach hinges on phenomenological anthropological analysis of human–environment interactions [23], where knowledges and practices do not precede people’s engagement with the environment but emerge in every-day interactions [24]. As a result, the notion of socio-ecosystem does not separate the social and environmental impacts of tourism. Instead, considering the inextricable entanglement of human, non-human and more-than-human entities, it provides a more complex way of studying the intersections between forms of governance, cultural and social structures, and human–environment relations among local communities [25]. Alongside the notion of the socio-ecosystem, the idea of resilience also offers a more suitable framework to assess the impacts of tourism than other related notions, such as sustainability. Rather than just a particular state of being, resilience is a heuristic tool that helps us evaluate the success of tourism initiatives from within the complex network of meanings, needs and values of the local community [21]. Sustainability 2020, 12, 4602 3 of 21 Resilience focuses on community agency in the attempt to answer questions such as: “How do some members of local communities feel about running a tourism business?”; “How and why do they do it?”; “What does it mean for the rest of the community not directly employed in tourism?”; “How does tourism fit within existing socio-histories?”; and “How does it merge with, or alter their engagement with the surrounding environment?”. The notion of sustainability alone is not enough to answer these questions. As Lew et al. [26] argue, though distinct conceptual paradigms, together these two notions (sustainability and resilience) provide us with a more suitable perspective to studying what the community wants to conserve and how they want to do it (sustainability), and what they want to change and how they want to do it (resilience). In short, the novelty of the socio-ecological resilience approach is that it does not approach tourism only as an economic business, but also as a complex practice that develops in the context of meaningful community–environmental entanglements [22]. An analysis of the contributions of tourism to socio-ecological resilience must consider that these contributions are not necessarily straightforward, but usually subtle, complex and dynamic. They might also vary according